Accel World - Volume 7 - Chapter 6

6

The next day was Wednesday, June 19.

He opened the door to his mother’s bedroom a crack to tell her he was leaving for the day, and to his Neurolinker came a five-hundred-yen lunch allowance. Afterward, he took the elevator to the ground floor and stepped out onto the sidewalk of the ring road, Kannana Street.

In social studies class the other day, he had gotten the chance to watch a video from a long, long time ago, recorded on the streets of Suginami where Haruyuki and his friends lived. It had been taken at the beginning of the century, around the year 2010, with a video camera, so it wasn’t a 3-D video you could do a full dive in, but rather a flat image. However, the images of the town in such disarray had made a serious impression on the students. It was different from the electrical chaos of the current Akihabara, half of which was really just for show. This was everyday life laid bare, steeped in years of history and the work of its citizens. Even along Kannana, supposedly the main thoroughfare in the city, small individual-owned shops and even regular homes could be seen everywhere.

Of course, if you went down a little into one of the back streets, there were any number of stand-alone homes and old apartment buildings even now. But the main thoroughfares of Kannana and Oume had been nearly doubled forty years earlier, and only strings of large-scale commercial institutions, housing complexes, or tidy green spaces lined them now. At and around Koenji Station as well, the unorganized bustle of the past was gone; the area had been completely transformed into a multistoried combination building linking the facilities around the pedestrian deck.

And there was one more thing. Haruyuki noticed an inconspicuous change that nonetheless held major significance. Something he couldn’t go a day without seeing, everywhere, inside and out. No one paid them any mind precisely because there were so many. Black half or full spheres, about five centimeters in diameter. In the old video, there wasn’t a single one of these so-called social cameras anywhere.

In class, they also learned that this entirely automatic monitoring camera net began to be set up in the mid-2030s. After that, occurrence of crime in public spaces dropped dramatically. Considering the formidable performance of the cameras, this was only natural. After all, when the system caught any illegal activity within its field of view, it automatically identified and tracked it, while reporting it to the local police at the same time. Naturally, this was not to say that every little crime without exception ended up in arrest and indictment, but, for instance, if you tossed a cigarette butt or an empty juice container on the ground within view of a camera, a warning mail would arrive from the authorities the next day, and a fine would be automatically withdrawn from your bank account at the end of the month.

Exactly where this extremely advanced and complicated image processing was carried out and by what system was a state secret of the highest order, and not a single detail was disclosed to the citizens of the country. The sole fact made public was the name “Social Security Surveillance Center,” or the SSSC for short. Even the Kuroyukihime said she could only guess at where the center was. Obviously, Haruyuki couldn’t even do that.

Immediately before the raised platform of the Chuo Line, he turned right off of Kannana and arrived at the road to school, bathed in the ceaseless roar of cars racing along. As he walked, he started wondering and whirled his head around; he knew the social cameras were looking down with a bird’s-eye view from everywhere: power poles and street lamps, traffic signs, signals, all of it. To be honest, he could see how it would be creepy, but for Haruyuki, the system held a significance greater than maintaining public order.

It went without saying that this significance was Brain Burst. The BB program easily infiltrated the social camera net, supposedly guarded by top-level walls, and generated 3-D fields from those super-high-precision images to produce a reality that rivaled that of the real world. The fact that Burst Linkers were able to gain another self in their duel avatars and another reality in the Accelerated World was first and foremost because of the overwhelming amount of information in the duel field.

However, this system, utopia though it may have been for gamers, had just one negative side.

In seventh grade, Haruyuki had been subjected to horrible bullying by three students in his class. On an almost daily basis, they’d forced him to buy them bread and juice with the five hundred yen he got for lunch and bring it up to the corner of the roof where they hung out. If he refused—and even when the bread they had specified was sold out and he couldn’t buy it—they had punched and kicked him mercilessly, and forced him to grovel on his hands and knees, scraping his face against the concrete of the roof.

Those three had been able to continue with this sort of behavior, clearly against the rules of the school and wandering into the criminal, for more than six months partly because Haruyuki was too timid to tell his homeroom teacher or the school authorities about what was going on, but the fact that their hangout behind the air conditioner at the west edge of the roof of the second school building was one of the few places on campus outside the reach of the social cameras also played a large part. It seemed that a map or something of places outside the view of the social cameras was passed around among this kind of outlaw student, so they could carefully select “safe zones” and continue their bullying. This sort of thinking was shared not just among delinquent students, but among adult criminals as well.

Naturally, however, the cameras weren’t in the same locations permanently. The update speed in a semipublic place like a school was a bit lenient, but in places like shopping districts or back alleys, cameras were added and moved with incredible frequency, making it nearly impossible for professional criminals to always be aware of their range of view.

But there were people who could perfectly identify random places outside the view of the cameras in a mere second. Burst Linkers. All a Burst Linker had to do was shout, “Burst Link,” and do a full dive into the clear blue, Basic Accelerated Field. In that world, things existing within view of the social cameras were reproduced as they were in reality, but for those items outside their view, the system “conjectured and complemented.” These items were basically reproduced as smooth objects with few details, so a Linker could tell at a glance whether something was within view of the cameras or not.

This “privilege,” unattainable even to the leader of a large-scale criminal syndicate, had sent a small portion of Burst Linkers running toward a certain type of criminality. They were the ones called Physical Knockers, or PK for short. Several of them would target Burst Linkers outed in the real and attack them outside the view of the cameras. Initially, it was in the shadows, but in recent years, they would lock hapless Burst Linkers in cars and things, and in both cases, threaten them with violence and force them into direct duels. Unlike normal global net duels, there was no once-a-day limit in a direct duel, so the person being attacked was doomed to face loss after loss. In mere seconds of real-world time, the attackers stole a massive amount of points, and in the blink of an eye, the victim had lost everything, ending up in a forced uninstall of Brain Burst. It was a “death” for Burst Linkers that was even crueler than Unlimited EK in the Unlimited Neutral Field.

Thus, Kuroyukihime had told Haruyuki to at least pay mind to the view of the cameras on the road. It might have been a little creepy, but the fact that he was able to see those black spheres around him meant he was safe. Although he didn’t expect to be attacked in the real when streams of students and office workers were flowing all around him. Yawning deeply, he called up the schedule for that day on his virtual desktop and went to check that he hadn’t forgotten some homework or report.

At that moment, a hand stretched out from the gloom beneath the overhead train tracks immediately to the left of the sidewalk and grabbed on to the collar of Haruyuki’s shirt from behind.

“Hinhk…?!”

No way! PK?! A flat-out real attack when there are this many people, and in full view of the social cameras?! He began to freak out and very nearly started to wave and kick his arms and legs, but just as he was on the verge of doing so, a familiar voice whispered in his ear.

“Hi.”

A single word, a single syllable, likely the shortest of all possible greetings. He stopped flailing and nervously looked over his shoulder to find the face of a slightly older girl, with an adult look that somehow managed to provoke a sense that she was no ordinary person.

“P-Pard?” he said, dumbfounded, but his attacker did not reply. It was self-evident, and there was no point in her replying. As usual, she was sticking to her style of finishing up anything conversation-related in the barest minimum time. At any rate, he left out the question of what she was even doing here and returned her greeting, collar still in her hand. “G-good morning.”

She nodded lightly as she released him, and his floating heels hit the ground. Sighing, he turned around and took in the presence of his attacker once more.

Her understated hairstyle was the same as always—black, parted in the middle, and bound in a single braid on her back. But she wasn’t wearing the maid’s uniform from the first time they had met, at a cake shop in Sakuradai in Nerima Ward, or the rough T-shirt and jeans look from when they met later at Tokyo Skytree. Instead, a white collar on a navy top, with a triangle scarf and a thin-pleated skirt of the same color—the typical sailor school uniform, in other words.

It wasn’t a particularly unusual look. Looking around, he could see any number of uniforms like it among the students headed for the station. However, when the wearer was leaning up against the seat of a large electric motorcycle with a low, ferocious form like a large carnivore, it was a different story. The combination was just too out of place, and earned one gawking stare after another from the sidewalk.

The bike was parked at the entrance to a narrow alley that passed under the overhead line and broke off to the south from the road Haruyuki took to school. To avoid the inquiring eyes, Haruyuki took a step into the dim alley and fumbled for what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know the real name of the uniformed rider who had suddenly appeared before him. The nickname “Pard” had slipped out but was normally not something to be used around regular people, because it was a contraction of her avatar name.

Blood Leopard. The deputy of the Red Legion, Prominence, which ruled over the area from northern Nakano to Nerima, a level-six Burst Linker, nicknamed Bloody Kitty. A warrior among warriors, who had destroyed Rust Jigsaw of the Acceleration Research Society before Haruyuki’s eyes with a single bite.

Now that he thought about it, she always appeared before him out of the blue and surprised him, but even still, this was just too sudden. Unable to decide on what to ask first, he flapped his mouth for about two and a half seconds. Then it was apparently the end of Haruyuki’s turn, and Pard leaned forward off the motorcycle, her left hand shooting out. In her fingertips was a small plug dangling from a red shielded cord—a direct XSB cable.

He let out a mental cry, but since she’d end up jabbing it into his Neurolinker if he just stood there and watched, he hurriedly took it and jacked in himself with the cable that was fortunately two or so meters long. The wired connection warning popped up in his vision, and immediately after it disappeared, a slightly low, husky voice echoed in his mind.

“I didn’t mail you because I have info I wanted to tell just you first.” Naturally, this was the answer to the question Haruyuki should have asked first. He looked up at her as she leaned back against her bike again and crossed her arms.

He somehow managed to shift the gears in his brain and utter in neurospeak, “Does that mean you don’t want the other members of Nega Nebulus to know I saw you?”

“That’s the end result, yes. It’s not that I don’t trust your comrades. I just wanted to let you decide what info to pass along.”

Unable to immediately get what Leopard was trying to say, he cocked his head to one side. The cable connecting their Neurolinkers shook, and a hazy light slid along the shielded, braided wire.

They might have been in the narrow lane beneath the tracks, but they were still in full view of the north side of the sidewalk. Haruyuki wondered what people made of the high school girl in a sailor-style uniform leaned up against a large motorcycle with a short, round junior high boy, directing and staring at each other first thing in the morning. Old, young, boy, girl—the people passing by gazed at them freely, and frighteningly, he glimpsed Umesato uniforms among them, but the words Leopard uttered next contained enough of a shock to send all these scattered thoughts easily flying.

“Silver Crow. There’s a movement to ask a PK group for your immediate purge.”

“What…,” he gasped, his real voice slipping out. He staggered for a moment, and then quickly regained his footing. But the sensation that the ground was slowly swaying did not leave him.

Seeing him like this, Pard twitched an eyebrow and stretched out her right hand once more. She pulled on Haruyuki’s shoulder and sat him up on the front of the motorcycle seat, immediately to her right. The large bike, firmly supported by a solid kickstand, didn’t move an inch even as it took his full weight.

Slightly regaining his calm from the reliable feel of the machine he had ridden several times, Haruyuki finally sent his next thought through the cable. “Purge…This is because of the Armor of Catastrophe thing, right? But at the Meeting of the Seven Kings, they said I’d have this whole week.”

“Yes. However, the ones talking the extreme talk aren’t the kings, but some of the key Burst Linkers under them. They’re insisting…that you’re the source of the infection of the ‘dark power’ that’s been spreading through the Accelerated World these last few days.” Even the indomitable Pard showed the merest hint of hesitation before speaking those words.

However, paying no mind to this, Haruyuki trapped an even larger gasp in his throat. “That’s—N-no, I…” Reflexively, he looked up at Leopard standing to his left and shook his head violently. “They’re wrong! It’s not me! I—I would never make something like that…”

But even as he protested the idea, a voice came back to life in the distance in his mind. Ash Roller’s final words in the closed duel the morning before, very near where they were now on Kannana Street.

“There’s more to the rumors I heard. This ‘weird tech’ Utan and Olive are using…I heard it’s a copy of Chrome Disaster’s power.”

It was true that the shadowy aura emitted by users of the ISS kit and the dark fluctuations that blanketed Silver Crow when he equipped the Armor of Catastrophe did strongly resemble each other. Someone who saw both of them could determine that they were of the same origin. Still, a single day was much too little time for this rumor to race around the Accelerated World and grow into talk of an immediate purge of Silver Crow.

At the same time, though, Haruyuki could see that it wasn’t necessarily impossible. For Burst Linkers, a mere 1.8 seconds in the real world was actually equivalent to thirty minutes. If the rumor was spread among the members of the Gallery at the countless duels happening one after another in Shinjuku, in Shibuya, in Akihabara, it was plenty believable that some people espousing strong views on the matter had already appeared. Believable, but in his heart, he simply could not accept it.

Pard watched as Haruyuki opened his eyes wide and shook his head in short, sharp increments, and a faint but definite smile rose up onto her lips. The right hand that had trapped his collar before now patted his back lightly. “K, got it. Red King and me, we don’t believe the ranting and raving. But we can’t be optimistic, either. Which is why I came to give you the info.”

Words weren’t quick to come out. But the softness and warmth of the hand touching him through the fabric of his shirt pushed back the shock and terror, even if it was only for the moment.

The Red Legion, Prominence, had what was basically a temporary cease-fire with Haruyuki’s Nega Nebulus, although this certainly didn’t mean they had formed an alliance. When he met the Legion Master, Niko, she had contacted Haruyuki in the real world and forcefully requested their help in subjugating the fifth Chrome Disaster, but she had paid back that debt with interest when they were dealing with Dusk Taker, so at present, their relationship could be said to be completely even. Which was why, for Prominence, there was no longer any obligation to maintain the cease-fire with Nega Nebulus, especially not to the point of incurring the displeasure of the other five great Legions. In fact, it wasn’t hard to imagine that some people within the Legion were probably already of the opinion that they should resume attacks in the weekend Territories.

And yet Niko and Pard continued as they had, not fighting, and more than that, they would even go out of their way, like Pard was doing now, to inform him of a direct danger in the real. Probably—definitely as a friend.

“Thank. You.” Haruyuki spoke these words alone, not just with his thoughts, but also with his real voice. Using the back of his hand to rub away the tears welling up in his eyes, he got himself back on track. The way to respond to Pard’s kindness wasn’t to pointlessly freak out and practically cry on her; it was to calmly grasp the situation and handle it in the best way possible. He took a deep breath and switched back to neurospeak.

“But even if they are talking PK, it’s not as easy as all that, right? I mean, they have to out me in the real first.”

“Yes. The PK groups don’t have an inexhaustible supply of points, either, so they can’t use extreme methods like Rain did before to get in touch with you in the real world.”

“…That’s true.”

Niko had used the fact that in reality, she was in elementary school and systematically applied for hands-on school visits at the junior high schools in Suginami Ward, where she got temporary accounts on the local nets and checked the matching list to pin down the school Silver Crow was enrolled at. Next, she set up camp where she could look out at the school gates and accelerated each time a student came out on their way home after school to check the matching list, eventually cracking Haruyuki’s identity in the real. The number of points she used in the process was not on the level of a hundred or two hundred; this method was impossible for anyone who wasn’t a king and no longer needed to be diligent about points to level up.

So then how exactly were the people espousing this strong opinion planning to PK Haruyuki?

He furrowed his brow, and Pard, next to him, also looked as though she was thinking. “Right now,” she muttered, “the only ones outside the current members of Nega who know your real name are me and Niko. That right?”

He nodded after a moment’s hesitation. “Yeah. You should be.” To be more accurate, if they were talking about “knew in the past,” then there was actually one more person. Dusk Taker, the marauder who had appeared at Umesato Junior High as a new student that year and overwhelmed Haruyuki and his friends while Kuroyukihime was away. But Haruyuki and Takumu had defeated him in a decisive battle in the Unlimited Neutral Field, and he lost all his points and had Brain Burst forcibly uninstalled. His memories related to the Accelerated World had been completely erased, and he was currently aware of Haruyuki only as someone he used to play some game with.

Of course, the possibility that he passed along Haruyuki’s real-world info to the organization he belonged to, the Acceleration Research Society, was not zero. But if he had, then he ran the risk of exposing his own identity, since they went to the same junior high school. Given how utterly and completely Dusk Taker rejected values like friendships and bonds, Haruyuki couldn’t believe he would have trusted the members of his organization that much.

Leopard moved her head lightly. “You’ll just have to trust me and Niko, but if that’s all of us, then those hard-liners won’t crack you so easily. If you…purify the armor before the Meeting of the Seven Kings on Sunday and the kings confirm it, the idea of purging you will be totally baseless. But there is just one thing…” Unusually for her, Pard trailed off and turned her whole upper body toward Haruyuki, before continuing in a deeply apprehensive voice, “There is just one force of concern.”

“Force?”

“We assume there are several PK groups out there, but it’s not easy to find out who’s in them. Put another way, once they are found out, they’re purged with the collective power of all Burst Linkers and lose all their points before they even know it.”

Haruyuki bobbed his head up and down. His teacher Sky Raker had also smilingly informed him that she had tossed a Burst Linker who had been identified as a PK deep into the territory of a Legend-class Enemy. PKs were so detestable that even the (supposedly) kind Raker adopted such merciless methods. In which case, how was it even possible in the first place to make a request to these guys to purge Haruyuki? First of all, how did the would-be purgers get in touch with the PK?

Leopard replied to Haruyuki’s question with a low, stifled thought. “There’s a group that fancy themselves ‘executioners.’ They’re the sole PK group who’ve made the group name known. The most malicious and evil physical knockers. Supernova Remnant, Remnant for short.”

“Supernova Remnant,” he parroted.

“They take on PKs in Japanese yen instead of burst points,” Leopard added, a faint grimness rising up onto her normally cool brow. “They have a ton of know-how about cracking the real. Every Burst Linker they’ve been contracted to execute has without exception been taken out with a PK. For them, Brain Burst’s not a game; it’s nothing more than a way to earn money.”

“Wha…” Once more, Haruyuki gasped in his real voice, this time unconsciously.

“Why…” A chill running up his spine, he racked his brain as if to try and fight back. “Why are they just left to do that? If anyone’s going to be purged, shouldn’t we start with them instead of me…”

“Naturally, people have said the same thing many times in the past. But no matter what anyone does, no one can get ahold of any of the members. The way you place the order, you send a money code together with the target’s name and information to an anonymous mail address. It just might be they don’t do normal duels at all and just level up through PK. In which case, it’s totally possible they are completely mysterious Burst Linkers known to no one.”

“Th-that’s…So then it’s almost like they’re ghosts—no, gods of death, aren’t they…” Haruyuki let out this futile thought, backside still resting lightly against the seat of the electric bike.

Leopard affirmed his words with a short silence and then gently touched his back again. “This is all still guesswork. You don’t need to be excessively scared. The biggest risk for outing in the real is information leaked by a ‘parent’ or ‘child,’ and you don’t have a child—” At this point, Pard cocked her head momentarily as if to say, You don’t, right? and Haruyuki hurriedly bobbed his head up and down. “And your parent’s the king of your Legion, not to mention a seasoned veteran. She wouldn’t carelessly let something slip or sell you out. So in such a short time, even for those would-be executioners, outing you in the real’s impossible.”

The thoughts flowing through the cable stopped there for a moment. But Haruyuki understood that Pard had chopped just a bit off the end of her sentence. Outing you in the real’s impossible, I think. That’s what she had actually been going to say. Because if she was convinced that it was absolutely impossible, there would have been no need to come all the way over like this and warn him. But she’d made it a declaration, perhaps to give Haruyuki strength.

He tried to bolster himself with this declaration anyway and looked up at the older girl sitting. “Understood,” he replied in a firm thought. “But just in case, I’ll be careful on my way to and from school.”

“K. You should walk home with someone else especially when you’re going home late. Don’t get too close to anywhere the social cameras can’t see, either,” Leopard added, and the conversation was barely finished before she was yanking the XSB cable from their Neurolinkers. She quickly coiled it up and stuck it in the pocket of her skirt.

Since the directing had been released, Haruyuki opened his mouth to thank her with his real voice. “Oh, uh, seriously, thank—” But he was forced to unexpectedly interrupt himself.

Pard pulled a spare jet helmet out from the luggage space at the rear of the bike and plopped it on his head. After nimbly fastening the strap under his chin, she grabbed her own full-face helmet from the handlebars and slipped it on.

…Huh?

Without giving him the time to even open his eyes wide, the high school rider grabbed both handles from behind Haruyuki as if covering him, and murmured the voice command, “Start.” The motorcycle’s dash, connected with her Neurolinker, flashed brightly, while the front and rear active suspension raised the vehicle body up in a supple motion, like a leopard about to jump out after its prey.

“Uh, uh, um!”

No way. No. Don’t. I’m not ready. Haruyuki’s mind raced, and in his ears came a low murmur from the in-helmet speaker.

“I took a fair bit of your time. I’ll give you a lift to the school gates.”

“I-i-i-i-i-it’s okay, y-y-y-y-y-you don’t have to.”

“NP.” She lightly opened the throttle, and the bike sleepily moved forward and out onto the road along the overhead train tracks. She dropped the machine into a right turn, and the front wheel headed in the direction of the station. In the next instant, the two large output in-wheel motors roared ferociously.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!!”

The scream he let out as he clung to the vehicle with his arms and legs was without a doubt heard with a significant Doppler effect by the students walking along the left side on the sidewalk.

Having hit hard with the super technique of riding up to the school gates on an electric bike that the average junior high school boy would call nothing but “super ultra great cool,” in tandem with a high school girl in a sailor-style uniform to boot, no sooner had Pard waved lightly and raced off toward Kannana than Haruyuki was activating his special attack Dash and Flee for the first time in a long time to race inside the school.

Begrudging even the time it took to change into his indoor shoes, he climbed up the central stairs of the first school building and arrived at the classroom of eighth grade’s C class, where he finally let out a long breath. With a feigned nonchalance, he took his seat and fiddled with his virtual desktop in a purposeful manner.

Slap! At the same time a hand hit his back, a familiar voice rang out. “Morning, Haru.”

His shoulders stiffened up momentarily before he awkwardly turned around to return the greeting. “M-morning, Chiyu.”

The instant Chiyuri Kurashima—his childhood friend who it was no exaggeration to say he had known since he was born—saw his face, her own went from puzzled to intent stare. “You’ve got that ‘oh crap’ look on your face.”

“I—I do not. This is just my ‘I hate gym first period’ face.”

“That’s tomorrow. First period today’s math.”

“Oh! Uh, um, then it’s my ‘I hate math’ face.”

Here, her expression finally changed from intent stare to eye rolling, and he let out a sigh of relief. Having gotten to class before him, Chiyuri had no way of knowing yet how Haruyuki had come to school, and even if she would find out sooner or later, the best policy at the moment was to avoid it. He shifted his gaze with maximum naturalness, looking toward the rear of the room, and opened his mouth. “Uh…umm, huh? Taku’s not here yet? He never cuts it this close.”

Noticing that his other childhood friend’s desk was empty even though there was only five minutes left before the first bell, Haruyuki made this remark solely to change the subject. But the moment he did, Chiyuri’s forehead creased with worry, and now it was his turn to look puzzled.

“So, the thing is, Haru”—Chiyuri glanced back herself and lowered her voice—“Taku’s home with a cold.”

“What…” Reflexively, he ran his fingers along his virtual desktop and opened the class register in the local-net menu. An “absent due to illness” icon was indeed displayed beside the name Takumu Mayuzumi, class number 31. When he clicked on it, the simple explanation FEVER DUE TO COLD popped up.

“That’s weird. That guy getting a cold…” Haruyuki furrowed his brow. Having trained in kendo from a young age, Takumu had always been much healthier than Haruyuki. They had known each other a long time, but Haruyuki couldn’t remember any more than a mere handful of times Takumu had been taken down by a cold, and all of those had been in the winter, when it was already going around.

It didn’t seem to make sense to Chiyuri, either. She brought her face in close abruptly and lowered her voice even further. “So, like, last night, he didn’t look like he had a cold at all, right? Maybe the fever started after that?”

“Oh, now that you mention it…And if he had been feeling like he was coming down with one, he would’ve been super careful to try not to give it to us.”

Chiyuri nodded deeply. Takumu was the kind of person who would never neglect this sort of consideration. So then maybe he had gotten sick after he’d gone home after ten—

No. A sensation like a sudden cramp ran up the back of his head, and Haruyuki’s eyes grew unfocused.

Something Takumu had said at Haruyuki’s house, and something in the information communicated to him that morning by Pard. The two combined, and a hazy anxiety began to bloom. Some place deep, deep down where light didn’t reach, something was coming. And while he was sitting here, a situation he would never be able to come back from was drawing nearer moment by moment. A premonition-like panic.

“What’s the matter, Haru?” As if his unease was contagious, Chiyuri also furrowed her brow.

He brought his eyes back into focus with a gasp and shook his head sharply. “N-no, it’s nothing. Right. On our way home, let’s go visit him together. Mail me once practice is over.”

Chiyuri turned large eyes on him as if trying to see through to his heart, but finally she nodded. “Yeah…Okay. And you have Animal Club stuff, too, right? Tell me when you’re done working there.”

“Okay, got it.”

The first bell rang, and she waved lightly before returning to her own seat. Haruyuki turned to face forward again, and staring at the still-open class list, he fought the urge to mail Takumu right then and there. Currently, all students, including himself, were forcibly cut off from the global net, so there was no way for him to get in touch with Takumu, who was supposedly at home in bed.

It’s fine. It’s all in your imagination. As of this moment, the only one exposed to any Brain Burst–related problems is me. The Armor of Catastrophe, the ISS kits, Remnant—none of it has anything to do with Taku being absent. I’ll buy him some of that matcha ice cream he likes and go see him, and he’ll totally be smiling, kind of embarrassed, in his bed, Haruyuki told himself, and promptly swiped the window away with his right hand.

Their homeroom teacher yanked open the front door, and the orders for the day began to echo listlessly through the room.